1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to electronic mail systems. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a system, apparatus and method of keeping track of an e-mail attachment that has been detached from an e-mail message.
2. Description of Related Art
Electronic mail or e-mail is the transmission of messages over communications networks from a sender to a recipient. An e-mail generally has two parts: a header, which includes the e-mail addresses of the sender and the recipient as well as the subject matter of the e-mail and a body, which includes the message itself. As is well known, the message can be a note entered using a keyboard and/or an electronic file. When an electronic file is the message or makes up part of the message, the electronic file is generally appended or attached to the body of the e-mail. The attached file may be accessed using an application program such as the one with which the file was created.
At some companies, e-mail messages of employees are kept on servers. To keep the storage space used on those servers at a minimum, attached files are generally detached from e-mail messages upon receipt. When a file is detached from an e-mail message, it is ordinarily stored locally (e.g., on a recipient's computer system) and a link to the storage location of the detached file is inserted in the message to which it was attached. The link facilitates access to the file so long as the file remains at the storage location.
However, if a user moves the detached file from its original storage location to another location, the link to the file in the message will no longer work. And, unless the user remembers the storage location to which the file was moved, the user may not be able to locate and access the file.
Thus, what is needed is a system, apparatus and method of keeping track of a storage location of an e-mail attachment that has been detached from an e-mail message.